There is, perhaps, no symbol more powerful, no word more electric than ‘God’. And because the God of the monotheisms undergirds and sustains the structure of so many people’s worldviews, if you want to command the attention of said millions, all you need to do is invoke God—claim God spoke to you, name your will as ‘His’, or proclaim “God wants X,” “God thinks X”—and thank God when all is said and done. For good or bad, the world can be yours. Point being: God-talk can be dangerous.
But, insofar as it concerns the core of religion, that’s not the point. Or, it shouldn’t be.
In The Case for God, Karen Armstrong explains that until the modern period, the major Western monotheisms all concerned themselves primarily with practice, the doing of religion, rather than doctrine. A good Muslim was one who stood alongside and supported the Pillars; a good Jew observed Sabbath and remained committed to the Law and the ritual year; and a good Christian embodied the Sermon on the Mount by caring for the marginalized, promoting compassion and peace, and sharing God’s love. This is what it meant to be religious, Armstrong explains:
Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible.
The Ascent of Intellectual Orthodoxy
For most of Western history, religion has been primarily a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. In fact, no doctrine made any sense without participation in the community of faith and in its rituals. No doubt, there were certain thoughts or “beliefs” that mattered and were of extreme importance; however, unlike today, these convictions were never understood as either the core or the purpose of the religious life.
In fact, for most of Western history “belief” has meant nothing like what it means today. Today, when someone asks me if I believe in God, for example, they are asking if I assent to the proposed verity or the factual existence of God—and usually it is in reference to a very specific understanding of that God. Similarly, if I'm asked if I have “faith in Christ”, the question is whether I agree with the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, died on a cross, and was raised from the dead, or some form of that story. In both cases, questions of “belief” and questions of “faith” require answers of thought.
Yet, as surprising as it may seem, these understandings are relatively recent. “Faith” has its etymological roots in the Greek pistis, “trust; commitment; loyalty; engagement.” Jerome translated pistis into the Latin fides (“loyalty”) and credo (which was from cor do, “I give my heart”). The translators of the first King James Bible translated credo into the English “belief,” which came from the Middle English bileven (“to prize; to value; to hold dear”). Faith in God, therefore, was a trust in and loyal commitment to God. Belief in Christ was an engaged commitment to the call and ministry of Jesus; it was a commitment to do the gospel, to be a follower of Christ. In neither case were “belief” or “faith” a matter of intellectual assent.
Nevertheless, by the dawn of the 18th century, as knowledge became a rational, theoretically driven venture “the word ‘belief’ started to be used to describe an intellectual assent to a hypothetical—and often dubious—proposition.” Religion would not be the same.
“Until well into the modern period,” Armstrong contends, “Jews and Christians both insisted that it was neither possible nor desirable to read the Bible literally, that it gives us no single, orthodox message and demands constant reinterpretation.” Myths were symbolic, often therapeutic, teaching stories and were never understood literally or historically. But that all changed with the advent of modernity. Precipitated by the rediscovery of Aristotle and the rise of scholasticism in the late middle ages, rational systematization took center stage, preparing the way for a modern period that would welcome both humanistic individualism and the eventual triumph of reason and science.
The early modern world was astir with cultural renewal, technological innovation, and religious reformation. The printing press captured the oral tradition on the written page, and the printed word became a matter of depersonalized, static precision. Henceforth, all religious quarrels (both those between Rome and the reformers and those amongst Protestant sects) would be suffused with an ever-increasing need to define oneself and one’s dogmatic opinions in relation to the (often heretical) other:
As the Reformation proceeded, Protestantism began to morph into a bewildering number of sects, each with its own doctrinal bias, its own interpretation of the Bible, and each convinced that it alone had a monopoly on truth. There was now a clamor of religious opinion in Europe.
Systems of thought were privileged over rituals, because it was felt necessary to initiate a litmus test for inclusion (and exclusion). Doctrinal alignment, therefore, differentiated between the faithful and the apostate, the saint and the heretic. Further, due to perceived abuses of clerical mediation, reformers sought more direct, unmediated access to God. Turning from its core as a religion of practice, the reformers became a garrulous bunch, a word-centered movement allergic to gratuitous ritual, a religious tradition wholly indebted to the power of language and the need to define. “Inevitably, this orgy of acrimonious doctrinal debate would affect the traditional notion of “belief,” pushing intellectual orthodoxy to the fore” where it remains today for much of Christianity.
Advances in the sciences further distracted Christianity from its practical core. While Judaism and Islam continued—and continue to this day—to be religions of practice, Christianity morphed into a religion of doctrine, the only major religion in the world to do so. Scientific advances during the modern period either invalidated or made literal the myths of the Christian tradition. Logoi (reason) superseded the truths of mythoi (myths) whereas the two had stood alongside each other as separate but equal paths to the truth.
Before long, mathematicians and physicists were the experts of theological discourse, for it was reason and the sciences alone which could speak about God. In the age of Descartes and Newton, science became the master of theology; scientific rationalism was what Newton called the “fundamental religion.” Theological assertions were imbued with certainty and necessity: “Theology was not only becoming aridly theoretical,” but it was also “in danger of becoming idolatrous.” The keys to the church had been handed over to the science lab, or so it seemed.
Apophasis, Or, We Have Forgotten How Little We Know
Apparently everyone had forgotten Pseudo-Dionysius.
Who?
By the late medieval period, Pseudo-Dionysius, a fifth- and sixth-century Christian, had become the theologian of method, a thinker highly respected by the likes of Thomas Aquinas. Psuedo-D’s approach to theological discourse was one saturated with humility and the awareness of the limits of both language and the human intellect. Pseudo-D explained that theology should proceed under three steps—a practice, really—of affirmation, negation of that affirmation, and negation of the negation.
Tags: apophasis, belief, christianity, creed, divine, doctrine, faith, god, greek, islam, judaism, karen armstrong, latin, pseudo-dionysus, theology
is usually a fine popular expositor of religion. I have most of her books and respect her.
But look at how this changes over time. The scientific sphere of competence is forever expanding, and as it grows into territory that was previously occupied by religion's sphere, the religious sphere of competence shrinks. Long term this might work out well, but short term religion is putting up a fight. For more understanding of this, switch over to the evolution creationism thread.
I think Karen Armstrong has also reversed the meaning of the word heresy. Historically speaking, the only ones who ever accused others of heresy are those who think they know who God is and what God wants.
I am an aspiring heretic. I think this is among humanities highest callings. Throughout the history of religion, heresy has been helping lead the way out of the dark ages and to a more just world. I find your lumping of those who say they know who God is or what God wants in with true heretics as insulting. I think you owe heretics and aspiring heretics an apology.
Jim, may I join you as an aspiring heretic? (I take it to assume one's heretic status would be just as presumptuous as to assume one's understanding of Holy Mystery - my preferred term here) So I'm pleased to admit that I've long been saying: "I'm pretty sure I'm a heretic."
You're actually the first person I've found who aspires to this perilous calling! So, I shake your hand across the miles! Assuming you'll have me! As an aspirant, I mean. ;)
Sure, we can all be aspiring heretics. Real heretic is another story. We can't just call ourselves that, the title must be bestowed by an official man of the cloth.
Or could be woman of the cloth, right? Or is that a heresy too? ;)
Women of the cloth don't always have all the same powers as their male counterparts, and I don't know of any major religion that allows women to be involved in deciding who the heretics are.
RIGHT! ;)
"And what they do not experience, they will discredit" - straight from the Scriptures. The person standing in the way of the Message of God is the person committing apostacy. The True Prophet does know what God wants and Speaks at God's Request. Apostacy is the unforgivable sin. It causes you to lose the Blessings of the Eternal Life. The biggest mistake is following the mankind generated beliefs. There is no Spirituality there. You are led down some road to a brick wall that cannot be passed and leaves you no time to turn your life around and get back to the Right Road. The True Christian Church is a Spiritual one led by the Spiritual man, not by a human man.
When science and Spirituality are meshed, that is when true Power to Overcome will be experienced and Peace will Abound.
In all the churches I have seen, the church is the God that the people worship. They are the church, and in effect they have become their own God, collectively speaking. Have you seen this tendency in churches?
Armstrong helps us understand why so many 'progressive' Christians and Catholics no longer go to church or belong to an institutionally defined orthodoxy. Much Western Christian 'religion' long ago gave up the beatitudes and woes, the story of the Rich Young Man, Dives and Lazarus, Matthew 25, and on and on for clericalism and ritual, for sacraments that can only be conducted through anointed hands (hands often tainted now with incredible scandal), for an orthodoxy on marriage, gender, sexuality, male superiority, authoritarianism, etc., that has no basis in the gospels and no relation to Jesus of Nazareth.
Armstrong gets it right. Jesus said we will be known by the love we have for one another, by our works we will be known. Those works did not include exclusion, orthodoxy, doctrinal purity, exercise of power, or attainment of wealth. They meant living with humility and absence of judgment (lest you want to be judged); they meant inclusion of those on the margins, especially lepers, the blind, the poor and hungry, people in need of healing; they meant becoming ourselves poor, stripping ourselves of our possessions and wealth; they meant including those who don't believe what we believe (the Roman centurion, Samaritans, WOMEN, for crying out loud!!).
Now these kinds of folks only get in if they are baptized into orthodoxy, into 'the one holy catholic and apostolic church.' Jesus would not be allowed entrance - if for no other reason than the motley crew he would bring along with him.
Margaret
Can heretics be included too?
"Imagine there's no heaven"
I believe we need a religion that makes no promises regarding life after death, and makes no threats regarding judgment day.
Of course, heretics, too. Anyone who puts love, forgiveness of enemies, justice, feeding the hungry, etc. first in their lives.
Wasn't it Jesus himself, who in John at several points says that belief in him is the way out of hell and to heaven? The infection started there, in thought-policing rather than in praxis. Thus the endless controversies about heresies in the early church- not about praxis, but about right belief. This is far from a new phenomenon.
Burk,
Karen's point about the verb "to believe" is actually the same as that of John the Evangelist.
The trouble is with the translations.
Hardly ever in John will one find the phrase "believe in X" or even "believe in me." Rather, the far more usual construction is "believe INTO me" (difference of preposition-- "en" + dative vs. "eis" + accusative). To "believe into someone" in Greek is to entrust one's life to that someone. It is thus far more about practice than about a list of doctrinal affirmations.
The trouble is most English translations rarely pick up on the distinction, very real in Greek.
It is notable in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds in both Greek and Latin as well. In both, the construction is "I" (or "We," in some mss.) believe into God/Jesus Christ/Holy Spirit. Apostolic Tradition (ca 215 by some estimates) notes that at baptism, after each of these affirmations spoken by the candidate (using a form then fairly close to the Apostles Creed now) the candidate would be brought under the water-- a sign of entrusting oneself fully to the Triune God made quite dramatic and physically real through this practice.
twbe FTW!
Hi, twbe-
I can't say that really washes from a historical perspective. What was the Nicene creed about? What were all the countless disputes about the three, the one, the one in three, etc. about? We may regard them as idiotic hairsplitting today, but the leaders of the church certainly did not at the time. They were of prime importance. And why? Because to believe in precisely the right things led to salvation, and to believe the wrong things (Marcionism, Arianism, gnosticism, et al.) was to be damned, both in this world by the Orthodox church, and, by its theories, (beliefs!), in the next as well.
When we turn to Islam, now there is a religion that is indeed less fixated on belief than on practice, from the earliest times. As long as you submit with the formula of No god but Allah and Muhammad his messenger, and do the prayers, then you are OK. But that is another story.
I agree. As much as I'm predisposed to accept Armstrong's assertion that the biblical definition of "belief" had nothing to do with "assent to an intellectual proposition", but in fact meant commitment to or engagement with a mission, I can't imagine that the centuries of discussion in late antiquity about the relationship of Jesus to God could have been about anything other than assent to (or dissent from intellectual propositions. All the "I believe..." statements in the creeds definitely seem to use the word in its modern sense, and are not about commitment to a mission.
"Systems of thought were privileged over rituals, because it was felt necessary to initiate a litmus test for inclusion (and exclusion). Doctrinal alignment, therefore, differentiated between the faithful and the apostate, the saint and the heretic."
litmus test: back to Leviticus we went!
"In the end, the apophatic tradition is perhaps most beneficial for what it excises from theological discourse, namely certainty and positivistic hubris."
Not everyone can tolerate uncertainty. I hate to say it, but that's a developmental step that many never get to. I just wrote this elsewhere:
I find that some people need ‘certainty’ and are ready to view the Bible as holding that ‘certainty’. Others of us can live with questions and uncertainty and MYSTERY. That takes faith and discernment. Not everyone can tolerate uncertainty, the need to grope in the darkness, the humility of not knowing for sure, of having to make your best stabs at living – on the basis of weighing and considering – using your best informed spiritual, intellectual, and emotional gifts – along with reality testing through consulting others via direct or indirect means.
This is the key.
But I agree with the writer of this book that "practice" is necessary. Because even if one has difficulty with uncertainty, following a practice, even the Jesus Prayer, gives someone something to hang onto. And coupling that with acts of mercy, well... there you have it!
The via negativa is not for everyone. But I wouldn't leave home without it!
In The Case for God, Karen Armstrong explains that until the modern period, the major Western monotheisms all concerned themselves primarily with practice, the doing of religion, rather than doctrine.
This is utterly false. Christianity was, from the outset, all about belief--about metaphysical claims concerning the existence and nature of God. Theologians and councils wrangled about fine points of theology and, as Gregory of Nyssa reports, theological argument was a popular passtime: used clothes sellers and bath house attendants argued about doctrinal minutae in the streets for sport.
Armstrong, like most religious studies scholars, is an atheist. There's nothing wrong with being an atheist but the suggestion that religion is really not about belief is just disingenuous.
I don't believe that God, if there is a God, cares in the least whether we believe he exists or not much less whether we get the theological details right or whether we are, in any sense, religious. But it's quite another thing to suggest, falsely, that religion is not really about belief, or that the idea that it is is some newfangled Western notion. That is just plain false.
Um, no she's not. You may disagree with her, but she is no liar, rather a brilliant scholar. She unpacks the Axial Age religions better than any scholar I know. Also, she is not an atheist. She is agnostic - big difference.
Also, what you describe here is the infection of Greek philosophy into the Christ movement in the second and third centuries (as the Roman model of hierarchy infected the movement with Constantine). The original Christ movement focused very much on mission, on healings, the breaking of bread, the loving community, and prophetic proclamations. Peter did not declare the presence of Christ by the power of doctrine, but by the power to heal. "In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean, walk!"
And this, from Acts 4: "no one claimed that any of their possessions were their own, but they had everything in common... There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need."
Certainly NOT for cathedrals. Not for fancy buildings and glorious tabernacles. "You will worship neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem..., but in spirit and truth."
Jesus would not recognize the institutions that put his name in big lights, billboards, and grandiose temples of worship, much less in exclusive doctrine and an exclusive clergy.
Margaret
'Scuse me but according to the article "Karen Armstrong explains that until the modern period, the major Western monotheisms all concerned themselves primarily with practice, the doing of religion, rather than doctrine [emphasis added]."
Last time I looked the 4th century C.E. was not "the modern period."
I don't have much interest in the "original Christ movement" which was, thank God, within a century of its inception "infected" by Greek philosophy, larded with intricate metaphysics and subsequently blessed by Constantine with an elaborate, expensive infrastructure.
Armstrong isn't just a liar: she isn't even original. She is recycling the same stuff that "religious studies" scholars have been yapping about for over a century, packaged for the latest generation of cultured despisers. Ho-hum. Every new generation thinks they invented sex, and every new generation of pious sentimentalists imagines that they've discovered a primitive Christianity that was really all about "loving community" and "prophetic proclamation" rather than fancy buildings and doctrine.
Oooooo, you're angry -- and not correct. If you don't care about the origins of the Christ movement and what it was trying to witness, then you don't have much to offer to this discussion.
Sorry, you are wrong about what Jesus was trying to do (certainly not trying to be God). It's okay if you don't want to believe that love, healing, forgiveness of enemies, recognition that one does not need religious authorities to be in relationship with God, etc. was the essence of his message and the inspiration that drew his disciples, full of human faults and foibles as they were.
And you may thank God for the infection of Greek philosophy, but that brought a dualism into western thought that has plagued us for centuries, brought little but sorrow and distortion of reality, and alienated us from our true selves.
If you need to be angry with Armstrong and call her a liar, I am sure she is strong enough to withstand the emotional response, whatever its true source.
I wonder what fancy buildings you imagine those itinerant preachers to have managed to build back in the day of the early (not primitive) Christian communities. :)
Of course, Jesus didn't believe he was God. He was one of many gurus and wonder-working rabbis kicking around the Hellenistic world whose cult happened to be picked up and institutionalized. He wasn't even particularly original or interesting as guru/wonder-workers go. Of course, all the metaphysics--Trinity, Incarnation and the lot--are a later overlay, something neither Jesus nor his earliest followers would have dreamed of.
So what else is new? This is the standard stuff that's figured in every undergraduate Biblical studies course for generations.
As one of the few people who have actually read Pseudo-D I was surprised by Karen Armstrong's argument. True, there is an apophatic tradition in the Christian tradition, particularly among mystics, and Pseudo-D clearly contributed to that tradition. But that didn't stop him from cramming the heavens with every conceivable species of divine and semi-divine entity in a weird and wonderful Neoplatonic hierarchy stretching from God to subhuman demonic creatures. You might call this hyper-belief. Karen Armstrong has no answers for the cultured despisers of religion so she decides that belief doesn't matter. Belief is a distraction. But if this is so, how can we speak of God in any meaningful way? And if we can't speak of God, does God cease to be? So it would appear. Drain all belief from religion and you don't get spirituality, you get pious agnosticism. No one in the entire history of the Christian faith, not even the mystics, has gone that far down the apophatic road. Apophatic theology doesn't claim that our beliefs about God are all wrong per se; simply that, whatever we say about God falls short of the mark and is therefore, at best, a species of half-truth. That isn't the same thing as claiming that nothing can be said about God. Pseudo-D had all kinds of things to say about God and so, I suspect, does Karen Armstrong. Does she really want to dispose of Matthew 25, Micah 6:8, Amos 5 and all the other prophetic texts progressives treasure because they say things about God and are therefore meaningless? I don't think so. Push the apophatic argument too far and religion becomes just as devoid of meaning as the new atheists claim it is.
The point is not whether or not one believes in Matthew 25, it's whether or not one actually practices Matthew 25. THAT is the declaration of belief; THAT is what separates mere belief from actual faith.
“Theology was not only becoming aridly theoretical,” but it was also “in danger of becoming idolatrous.” And we may now be about to find out just how far off the mark reasoned ignorance has taken us!
The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Baptism, the Trinity and the Resurrection, this new interpretation questions the validity and origins of all Christian tradition; focusing specifically on marriage, love and human sexuality, it overturns all natural law ethics and theory.
"the first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged. This new teaching delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition, that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable and 'extraordinary' evidence based truth embodied in action. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must now measure for itself, the reality of a new moral tenet, not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof for its belief.
What science and religion had agreed was not possible, now looks inevitable. Revolutionary stuff for those who have both the humility and moral courage to test this new teaching for themselves.
Further details at http://www.energon.org.uk
Some modern religious movements suggest that 'God' today need not be thought of as a mythical creator being, but it may be more worthwhile to to consider the word 'God'simply as a word that invites us to meditate on the great mysteries of life. This is the way of the New Earth Church (newearthchurch.org) - a modern church movement.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.